


Antibodies

by The_Exile



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Community: tic_tac_woe, Gen, Mass Death, Spoilers, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 18:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12940773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Melia can only stand by as she loses most of her subjects - that, and and thank her father for obeying the ancient tradition that kept at least some of them alive.





	Antibodies

**Author's Note:**

> for bingo square 'return of ancient race/old gods'

Melia watched helplessly as, one after the other at first, then a whole series of them so rapidly that it looked like a wave of malign energy was spreading through their ranks, her people became Telethia.

They blurred and melted as they transformed, their very DNA evolving in an instant as a certain genetic trigger was activated in all of them at once. Indiscriminate chunks of their surroundings were often integrated, so that they merged with their flying steeds or were joined together with the person standing next to them as they attained their new forms. The creatures who had once been an entire nation of High Entia were enormous, all curves and horns and wings of light, their colouring shifting from blues to purples. There was something very primal about them, as if they were now simply extensions of the Bionis. Even the latent etheric talent within their minds had become a supply of raw power for them to use in their new, singular purpose of reducing all life to its component parts and recycling it in bulk into the substance of the Bionis.

The world-Titan was hungry, it considered everything to be its food and the Telethia were the enzymes it used to assist its digestion. This was the simple fact of their world. Their power, once arrogantly thought to indicate that they were somehow superior, the chosen of the Bionis to rule, was just a tool given to them for when they were chosen for their real purpose, because they were also just tools. Their insistence on staying pure of bloodline had only concentrated the Telethia gene and reduced their chance of survival.

If it wasn't for the Prophecy left by the first Emperor and the insistence of the Imperial line upon keeping to its word, despite dissatisfaction to the point of assassination attempts from certain factions, their entire race would be extinct, Melia too. Only the fact that an Emperor genetically inherited a certain amount of non-High Entia DNA in order to pass the tests of the ritual to become Emperor in the first place, had saved her life. 

Her older brother had not been so fortunate. His DNA had not been quite right. If it had, he would have been the better candidate to inherit the throne in every way. It was bitterly ironic that she did not feel like someone who would make a good Empress, yet here she was, the last heir to the throne, facing her transformed brother in battle.

He was still fighting his transformation. She could just see his face inside the writhing morass of raw protoplasm trying to decide what shape it was supposed to be. Even as he started to lose control and dive at her, activating glands that shot pure etheric energy channeled directly from the Bionis, she saw the agony in his eyes.

"I will make this quick," she promised.


End file.
